Regarding the second point, As a counter-argument, it’s not certain that languages and frameworks from major vendors will continue to be supported either. For example Microsoft deprecated various UI frameworks, Firefox extensions are changing, and so on. (I’m sure there are better examples I can’t think of at the moment.)
Sure, large vendors deprecate stuff all the time. But you'll probably have plenty of notice and they'll have a path for your existing applications to follow. It may be painful, but it won't be catastrophic.
Contrast that with what would happen if No Red Ink went out of business and the author of Elm couldn't find a job that would allow him to continue to develop it. Things would be fine for months or years but eventually bitrot would set in.
Definitely not trying to spread FUD. I know some great folks that swear by Elm. It's just another risk factor (just like tech debt that might accrue should you use jQuery) to consider.
Actually, I used to work with Evan Czaplicki (the author of Elm) at Prezi around 2015. He was laid off with a bunch of other employees during a “reorg”. It didn’t seem to have affected Elm.
That's not a ringing endorsement of Elm's commercial viabity. Prezi hired the Elm creator and funded Elm development and then ran out of money to pay him.
> [the author of Elm couldn't find a job that would allow him to continue to develop it]'s just another risk factor (just like tech debt that might accrue should you use jQuery) to consider.
Nope. jQuery fit(ted) a different use case (spicing up server-side rendered HTML upto small browser based app-bits). Doing a browser-side app in Elm (what it's specifically made for) makes for code base that is so much easier to work on some years from now, than using jQuery to accomplish the same.
What I want to say is, the debt you're going to accrue applying it to Elm's domain will not be a risk, it is impossible not to be destroyed by that debt. Where Elm provides a serious alternatives to the browser app frameworks that are 10 generations younger than jQuery.
